Canada’s ‘Most Photographed House’ May Meet the Wrecking Ball

Perched together with a rustic street close to Lake Erie in southeastern Ontario, an uninhabited, partially collapsed Nineteenth-century farmhouse cuts an eerily elegant determine in opposition to the wide-open sky and the corn, soybean and wheat fields that encompass it.

Over the years, the crumbling home, close to Palmyra, Ontario, has turn into a vacation spot for photographers like Cathie Wright, who visits the property each month and has taken tons of of images of it, capturing it shrouded in snow or forged within the grey gentle of an overcast sky.

“It’s got this dystopian charm,” stated Ms. Wright, a retired skilled photographer and graphic artist from Ridgetown, Ontario. “I like to get the whole wide-angle effect of the cornfields going back. It adds to the isolation of it.”

But now, the home — so beloved by photographers that the Canadian news media has known as it Canada’s “most photographed house” — might must be demolished, regardless that the ravages of climate and time have taken it a lot of the approach there.

In a choice issued final month, a property requirements committee within the native municipality of Chatham-Kent, gave the proprietor of the home, Peter Anderson, till Oct. 20 to tear it down until he takes steps to protect or shield it or brings it into compliance with native property legal guidelines.

The news has devastated Canadian photographers who see in the home the light grandeur of a bygone period in rural Ontario when farmers throughout the province lived in homes prefer it with wooden stoves, wells and no operating water.

“I think it’s a crying shame,” stated Michael Chase of Amherstburg, Ontario, the proprietor of Windsor Aerial Drone Photography, who occurred to drive by the home on the best way again from an task in February and took a dramatic video of its ramshackle exterior.

“It should be designated as a historical site and saved to let it deteriorate naturally,” he stated. “It’s a tourist attraction.”

But Paul Lacina, the chief constructing official for Chatham-Kent, stated that the home, generally known as the Guyitt House, was “beyond repair” and in an “unsafe condition.” One aspect has fully collapsed and the construction is “collapsing into itself,” he stated.

There is proof that youngsters have been inside, consuming and lighting small fires, he stated.

“It could fall down and, if someone happened to be trespassing, it could fall on them,” Mr. Lacina stated.

Mr. Anderson, whose grandparents, Roy and Ethel Guyitt, purchased the property in 1908, stated he felt unfairly focused by the tear-down order, which got here in response to an nameless citizen grievance that was despatched to native officers final yr.

He stated fixing the home can be extraordinarily troublesome given how dilapidated it’s, and that submitting a court docket problem can be expensive. But he indicated he was not prepared to observe as a chunk of his household’s historical past is destroyed.

He mused that he may put chickens inside and name it a rooster coop.

“All I want them to do is leave me alone,” stated Mr. Anderson, 71, a farmer who lives in Muirkirk, Ontario, and has posted a “no trespassing” signal outdoors the home.

“I can put up a fence,” he stated. “But leave me alone.”

He stated that whereas he appreciated how a lot pleasure the property has delivered to photographers, he was pissed off that extra of them had not come ahead to assist him put it aside.

“I feel like a man on an island who is begging for somebody to rescue him,” Mr. Anderson stated. “Cruise ships are going by, and people have their cameras, and they’re waving and talking, but nobody will come and rescue me.”

The two-story farmhouse, throughout Lake Erie from Cleveland, Ohio, and about 95 miles east of Detroit and 160 miles southwest of Toronto, was most probably constructed round 1840 to 1850, Mr. Anderson stated.

The home as soon as had a brick exterior, a chandelier within the parlor and a grand piano, he stated. The home windows nonetheless characteristic ornamental scrollwork with hearts, circles and diamonds.

Mr. Anderson visited his grandfather and uncle there within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, when neighbors would come by to observe “Bonanza” or hockey video games on the tv. He inherited the property in 2003, lengthy after the final tenants had moved out within the Nineteen Eighties.

One of the explanations it has turn into such a magnet for photographers is its location, about 200 ft off the Talbot Trail, a rustic street that follows the shore of Lake Erie and is a well-liked route for scenic drives.

“You’re driving down that highway and all of a sudden, it’s just ‘boom’ there it is: this creepy-looking house off the road, and it really catches your eye,” stated Dave Conlon of Toronto, who posted a video of the home on his YouTube channel, Freaktography.

“Every time I stop,” Mr. Conlon stated, “a dozen people are there, taking pictures because it’s such a unique roadside attraction.”

Mr. Anderson stated he loved the crowds. Ten or 12 folks have been photographing the home on Thursday, he stated, when he went there to unfold fertilizer.

“On Sundays, it’s endless,” Mr. Anderson stated. “One comes, one goes. I can spend my whole day talking to them.”

Ms. Wright, the photographer who has been documenting the home each month for years, stated that if the property should be destroyed, she wish to be there to seize its last moments as a present for Mr. Anderson.

“I would like to photograph the very end,” Ms. Wright stated. “It would be a record shot.”